Intro
With Halloween just around the corner, there's no better time to bring out your horror themed board games to the table. Whether you’re into the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft with the well known Arkham series, or the campy horror of the B movies from the past, there is always a board game just right for your evening. One such game that I find myself compelled to play when I crave thematic horror deduction and tense decision making, is Terrorscape.
Overview
Terrorscape is an asymmetric hidden movement game for 2 to 4 players where a cast of three (out of five in the box) unique survivors get trapped in a haunted mansion and are pitted against an onslaught of many different (3 without expansions) supernatural killers, beasts and other ghouls alike. Intrigued? Good. Let's continue…
The goal of the survivors is to try and escape from the mansion co-operatively by collecting five keys that unlock one of the exits or repair the radio, send a signal and survive until help arrives. But that’s not as easy as it might sound when you're being chased by a ruthless beast played by one of your (hopefully) friends. The killer has a different goal in mind. He wins by catching and killing just one of the survivors! But don’t fret, the survivors aren’t as frail as they might seem and they have an arsenal of different ways to escape and confuse the killer. But here’s the twist – the killer doesn’t know where the sneaky survivors are or where are they going next, unless… they make a noise that alerts the killer to their whereabouts! On the other hand, the cast of survivors know the precise location of the killer most of the time (depending on the killer's abilities). This keeps tension and emotions high and makes victory taste even sweeter.
Dice Mansion
The first thing that catches your eye about this game is its table presence. A huge mansion looming over the table, well sculpted miniatures and good quality tokens litter the rooms of the mansion. The artwork is nothing to write home about but it does the job with clean, clear thematic illustrations that convey the games theme and style. But it’s not just aesthetic. Most importantly the mansion works as a screen between the players making sneaky decisions easier to hide from the opposition. Not only that, it also has an integrated dice tower for when the killer catches up to the survivors and they need to fight back! The mansion also works as a way to track the progress of collected keys, survivors' health and fear tokens. Despite seeming quite enormous, on the table it doesn’t feel bigger than an average game so it should fit on a smaller or narrower table than expected. The modularity of the game boards also gives you some leeway on how you want to set the game on the table. But everything comes at a cost...
Setup
The big mansion takes a while to set up and tear down. Even though it doesn’t take up a lot of time this game requires a bit of preparation. There is a neat little guide in the rulebook showing you how to pack and unpack everything. Not all components of the mansion need to be disassembled after the first play, but you will be tearing down the bulk of it. Although there is a compartment to store the dice tower that slots into the mansion I feel like this can be a small factor in getting this game to the table. The rest of the setup is quite straightforward. Everything is packed into neat trays and most of the components have a dedicated slot on the board. Of course, this impacts the footprint of the game box – taking up more than half of an IKEA Skadis slot – the Scandinavian standard for board game storage.
Gameplay
If you’ve ever played games where players take turns taking actions, you’ll be right at home. The straightforward setup smoothly leads into polished gameplay. Game complexity is, in my opinion, a subjective topic as players with less experience can struggle in some spots, but the game does a great job of providing each side with several player aids, round structures and key words for each side. That being said, as a host of a board game night I would first let my colleagues play on the survivor side to help them ease into the game. as playing as the killer can get confusing quite quickly if the survivors know what they are doing.
Gameplay revolves around several actions that the players can take. Survivors can choose from a few preset actions that stay the same throughout the game or actions provided by their abilities or special items that can be found during the game. Moving, searching for keys, healing characters or making noise in the next room to distract the killer is something you can expect to be doing as the surviving trio. Your goal, as previously mentioned, is to find five keys and escape the mansion or fix the radio, send a signal and survive five turns until help arrives. Sometimes the items you find can be a game changer. During one of our sessions survivors managed to escape my grasp and win the game all thanks to an item that let them take one extra action. The tension and relief the players experienced was immense. All thanks to their careful planning. Although the survivors know the whereabouts of the killer it can get a bit frustrating if you get caught early in the game. But don’t get discouraged even if you get caught. Every survivor has a second chance to escape and try again. The keys are hidden in special rooms where you perform the special action of searching for them in the key deck. Separating regular items from a specific deck just for the keys helps balance out the game and makes the search more fair to the players. You’ve found one! Uh oh! It slips out of your hands hitting the ground… Place a noise token in your location. Now the killer knows where you are! But maybe it was a carefully planned play to lure the assailant away?
As the hunter you will never truly know the location of your prey. All you have to go on is the noise they just made. Playing as the killer is a bit more complicated but it's quite easy to get the hang of it. You have a deck of set actions that you draw three cards from at the end of every turn. These actions are divided into three categories. Fast, slow and intermediate actions. On your turn you can do as many fast actions as you have cards of said category. These range from moving to revving your chainsaw to scare the new playmates in your mansion. After completing your fast actions you can play an intermediate action or choose to move and/or search twice. As the sneaky survivors skulk behind your back, searching is the only way to find and confront them. After you’ve found their hiding spot they get to roll a set of dice to determine if your attack was a success. The dice are heavily rigged in the killer's favour so more often than not (depending on the monster you are playing) your foes will get a taste of your wrath. This can sometimes feel quite unfair when playing as the survivors and some monsters seem much more powerful than others, but what we found is that there is always a successful tactic that can be utilised to be victorious against the dreadful assailant. Lastly there are slow actions that can be triggered only if you haven’t encountered any of the survivors. Rinse and repeat. But wait! Every time you run out of cards and get to reshuffle your discard pile your terrifying companion gains a level and becomes stronger in some way! This helps build the tension and gives an incentive to the opposing team to move quickly and not stall by hiding and not doing anything. With every reshuffle of the deck the stakes get higher as the killer gets more and more frustrated with the prey. This gives the stalking player more chances to catch his prey and win the game. Remember you only need to kill one of the survivors to ruin their morale and achieve your evil goal!
There are plenty more game mechanics, but I won’t deprive you of the awe of discovering them for yourself.
Finishing thoughts
Everything sounds great! So what's the catch? I did have some minor gripes with the game. This is a game heavily based on deduction and if you simply don’t enjoy these types of games, I fear this won’t win you over. Moreover, during some sessions you might feel like the game isn’t going your way. You won’t find the right items or draw the right action cards – so there is some luck involved, but if you pay attention to what's happening you will have fun moments of ruining your opponents plans. The interaction between players is constant and keeps you on your toes, which keeps every session somewhat fresh. This leads me to my next point. After a certain amount of playthroughs you’ll see everything the game has to offer. Playing in the same mansion over and over again gets stale after some time. But there is a solution to that. Provided in the manual of the game are three new modes of play that change up the way you play and interact with other players. There is even a mode that turns the co-operative effort to survive into a cut-throat fight for survival as everyone plays for themselves if that's what you are into. The manufacturer of the game „Ice Makes“ has also crafted four expansions for the game that provide new maps, characters and monsters to play as. And with the upcoming release of Terrorscape 2 (that is compatible with the first game) there are many more avenues to explore. But take it with a grain of salt as I haven’t had the chance of trying any of them yet and can’t tell you if they provide the player with new and interesting mechanics fresh enough to be worthy of your time.
If you like the idea of this game you can check it out at BGG here.
